Friday started well. On Thursday, we tried to trade in the ten or so old books we'd been lugging around Fiji, but the 2nd hand bookshops didn't want them all. So, on Friday morning we went to Union Square and left them spread around benches for people to find. We weren't being litter bugs - we'd registered them at bookcrossing.com, so whoever finds them can go to the website and register their find. Over the year I've "released" five or six other books on bookcrossing, but none of them have been "captured". I'm hoping this is because travellers are too cheap to use internet time for such things, and that the literary types in San Fran will be more willing to play my game.
We then checked out of the grotty Hostelling International Hostel, and in to the Quality Inn Union Square. It's a two star, which is a big step up for us. We have an en-suite, and a TV. This means we can go to the toilet until our hearts are content, and watch Everybody Loves Raymond.
We caught a bus to Haight-Ashbury, the hippy area from where the Grateful Dead came. I'd been there in 1995, and it didn't seem as hippyish this time - much fewer oddballs wandering around. Last time I was there I overheard someone say, "Hey, guess what! I found out who my real dad is last night." This time it was more "trendy" than "hippy". It was good though, and we had a really good Thai for lunch.
This is where we should have ended our day. We should have gone back to our hotel room and watched telly.
San Fran Disaster
Let's go to Fisherman's Wharf tonight, I exclaimed.
That's a touristy area, and we got the equally tourist cable car there. (They look like trams, but they're pulled up the hills by cables in the ground.) The cable cars return trip cost us twelve dollars - a bad start. We found the wharf and there were stalls selling lot s of seafood. There were nice looking seafood sandwiches, and lots of crab. We'd had a big Thai lunch, so we weren't looking for a meal, just a snack.
So how was it we ended up with loads of fried food, including chips? I really couldn't tell you. I think it involved a panic over getting the last available table, but we ended up spending over twenty dollars on loads of crap. The calamari was the worst I've ever had. The fish wasn't great. The chips were soggy.
Anne and I like our food. It's important to us. When we have a bad meal it makes us sad. We got in a mood. (Well, two moods - one each.) We left most of our meal, and forty minutes after we'd arrived at Fisherman's Wharf we were on the cable car on our way back. What a disaster. We went to a liquor store, bought some beer, and went back to the hotel room and watched Curb Your Enthusiasm. We felt full of grease and crap, and wondered if making yourself sick to get rid of your meal was necessarily a bad thing.
We'd well and truly clogged our hearts in San Francisco.